Pet Shop Boys – ‘Elysium’

Pet Shop Boys - 'Elysium'

Score

A massive foamy middle-finger to retromania

“I still like some of your early stuff”, deadpans Neil Tennant on ‘Your Early Stuff’, an oddly apt sentiment since ‘West End Girls’ jumped back into the charts after the PSBs’ appearance at the Olympics closing ceremony. But their introspective, mainly mid-tempo 11th album is a massive foamy middle-finger to retromania, running elegantly from jangly indie to kraut jabs. ‘Invisible’ movingly vocalises old-age invisibility, and despite an eye-rolling critique of the ‘state of pop’ in ‘Ego Music’, they’re saved by the excellent ‘A Face Like That’, a bolshy dancefloor jam that sounds like, and is truly as good as, their early stuff.